Fillmore Pulls Out of Newhall Ranch Suit

Fillmore officials have agreed to withdraw the city’s name from a county lawsuit aimed at halting the giant Newhall Ranch project in exchange for $300,000 from the developer to offset traffic impacts, prompting one county official to declare Thursday that the city has been “bought out.”

The Fillmore City Council unanimously voted in a closed-door meeting earlier this week to withdraw from the lawsuit and forfeit all future rights to sue the Valencia-based developer as part of the financial deal. The council took the action without first consulting with county officials.

“This comes down to a matter of principles,” Supervisor John Flynn said. “I think it’s unethical on their part to unilaterally withdraw. It’s like being in combat and a unit just withdrawing without telling the commander.”

Flynn said it all boiled down to one thing: “They were bought out.”

Fillmore officials said they agreed to the financial settlement because they believe it will resolve the city’s primary concerns about traffic resulting from the proposed 21,000-home development that would be built just east of the Ventura County line.

“For Fillmore, this is a sizable amount of money,” Mayor Evaristo Barajas said. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t go through all this [development] and get nothing out of it.”

Before approving the project’s environmental impact report last March, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to require that Newhall Ranch provide Fillmore with funding to offset the projected 30% increase in traffic expected to result from the neighboring suburb.

But Fillmore officials said the amount and the payment schedule were never clearly detailed and they feared the money might be a long time in coming, if it came at all.

“With this agreement we have a specific dollar amount. And we have certainty,” City Manager Roy Payne said. “It allows us to do the improvements upfront and take care of the potential problems before they become real problems.”

Fillmore’s decision to pull out of the lawsuit is significant because the city and its 13,000 residents stand to suffer some of the most severe effects from the immense housing project. Other petitioners in the lawsuit include the cities of Santa Paula, Ventura and Oxnard.

But county officials and representatives from neighboring Santa Paula point out that while Fillmore’s traffic concerns may have been addressed by the financial agreement, there are larger water issues that remain for the entire region. In fact, concerns the developer cannot provide enough water for its project is the main thrust of the lawsuit.

“When this project begins using up the ground water, that will affect the flow into the Fillmore basin,” Flynn said. “They have given very little regard to that. So this was not a prudent move on Fillmore’s part.

“I don’t think the city has ever understood the reasons for the lawsuit,” Flynn added. “The most basic issue is providing enough water and if they are only looking at traffic they have a very narrow interest.” Supervisor Frank Schillo said Fillmore would regret settling for so little when so much is at stake.

“That [money] won’t go far considering the magnitude of the development,” Schillo said. “They will sit there 15 years from now, wondering why they only got $300,000.”

Santa Paula Mayor Richard Cook expressed concerns Fillmore’s action will hurt efforts by the two cities to promote the agriculturally-rich Santa Clara Valley as a tourist attraction.

“I don’t know what they’re thinking,” Cook said. “This isn’t one project with 200 or 500 homes. It’s a nasty thing. It will hinder the Heritage Valley theme we’ve been working for together.”

Last April, Ventura County supervisors voted to sue Newhall Land & Farming Co. for illegally subdividing land, producing a flawed environmental report and not providing enough water for its project.

Despite Fillmore’s action this week, Assistant County Counsel Antonette Cordero said she is confident it would not affect the county’s lawsuit.

“This is not a negative because the fact that Fillmore resolved its concern does not preclude us from addressing our concerns,” she said.